# The ten lines

This is the real work of the session, and the one part nobody can do for you.

Rung three's third rule asks: *does anything here contradict what I already believe about my work?* The
model cannot answer that, because it does not know what you believe. These ten lines are what you tell
it. Without them that question returns vague noise. With them it finds the thing buried in paragraph
three of a friendly update.

Keep it to roughly ten lines. Longer is not better — it is harder to keep current, and a stale context
block is worse than a short one.

## Template

```
WHAT I AM WORKING TO
1. <project / client> — <the date you are working to, and what happens on it>
2. <project / client> — <date, and what happens on it>
3. <project / client> — <date, and what happens on it>

WHAT I AM WAITING ON
4. <who> owes me <what>, expected <when>
5. <who> owes me <what>, expected <when>
6. <who> owes me <what>, expected <when>

WHAT I OWE
7. I owe <who> <what>, by <when>
8. I owe <who> <what>, by <when>

WHAT WOULD CHANGE MY PLAN
9. <a date moving, a person leaving, a dependency slipping — the things that make your plan wrong>
10. <the same>
```

## Worked example

```
WHAT I AM WORKING TO
1. Northside fit-out — install starts 8 Nov; the crew is booked and non-refundable
2. Harbour Point — client walkthrough 14 Nov
3. Aldridge — contract renewal decision due end of November

WHAT I AM WAITING ON
4. Vendor confirmation of cabinet delivery for Northside, expected last week
5. Legal sign-off on the Aldridge renewal, expected 3 Nov
6. Harbour Point site access letter from the building manager, no date given

WHAT I OWE
7. I owe Priya the revised Northside sequence, by Friday
8. I owe the Aldridge steering group a one-page status, by 5 Nov

WHAT WOULD CHANGE MY PLAN
9. Any movement in the Northside cabinet delivery date — the whole install sequence hangs off it
10. Legal coming back with changes rather than sign-off on Aldridge
```

Line 9 is why the assistant catches the cabinets. A vendor writes a friendly project update, nothing is
asked of you, every rule you could write correctly concludes no action required — and the plan is now
wrong. The only reason a model spots it is that you told it the date mattered.

## Keeping it current

Rewrite it when a date moves, not on a schedule. Ten minutes a week is plenty. If you find yourself
unable to fill in "what I am waiting on," that is the finding — it means it is not written down
anywhere, which is the thing this whole session is about.